One of my favorite posts from Off The Bench was the Inaugural Who’s Awesome and Who’s Not Awesome. While subsequent iterations of the post haven’t carried the same sarcastic tone (perhaps a product of our mainstreaming, or perhaps we’ve just become callused to a good joke at the expense of someone who is far better at baseball than we are), this Who’s Awesome version promises to feature at least one witty comment, but just one organization: The Los Angeles Dodgers.
I’m not one to toot too many horns about billionaire men who pay a lower percentage in taxes than we do for our blog, but these new Dodgers owners have completely shifted the baseball landscape in a way that would make the deceased Mr. Steinbrenner proud. From Jonah Keri’s awesome piece at grantland.com:
At some point in the past decade — maybe right after the publication of Moneyball, maybe later than that — the baseball world became obsessed with efficiency. The sabermetrically savvy A’s and the scouting-adept Twins got very good while spending less than nearly every other team. The Rays followed suit. Those on-the-cheap wins caused other teams’ philosophies, and the way the media cover the sport, to change. The sharpest baseball analysts began using metrics such as marginal dollars per marginal win as a measure of front office acumen, and by extension, team success. Later, dollars per Win Above Replacement became the gold standard for everything from contract analysis to trade analysis to team analysis. General managers might not frame the discussion in exactly those terms. But as team owners started tapping a new wave of economically prudent GMs to run the show, they delivered a clear message to their new hires: If those guys can do it, so can we.
Magic Johnson don’t care. In the same way Honeybadger don’t care about danger, Magic Johnson and Co. don’t care about dollars.
With the Dodgers’ recent acquisition of $260+ Million worth of bad contracts in the form of Josh Beckett, Carl Crawford and, to a lesser extent, Adrian Gonzalez, and their early addition of contracts like Shane Victorino’s, Hanley Ramirez’s, and Joe Blanton’s, the Dodgers have taken the proverbial dump on the Moneyball philosophy of buying at or below value. I say that’s awesome.
Moreover, LA has projected the persona that Money (capitol M) is still flowing from their pockets, and they’re projected it with similar ferocity as Homer Simpson has been known to gaze upon a doughnut.
Nobody’s entirely sure the level of Magic Johnson’s involvement with the purchasing group, but his place as figurehead is something that has already worked wonders as a public relations move. Magic’s throne in the sports world is unique. His playing days behind him, his dominance is still tangible even in the era of Lebron, and the battles with Larry Bird still serve as the benchmark for player rivalry. Because of his public bout with AIDS, he has transcended sport and morphed into a revered sociological figure. That said, his competitive nature is widely known and that drive to win undoubtedly trickles throughout the organization.
Magic Johnson is awesome. And not just because of his nickname (which was knocked out in the Elite 8 of our nickname bracket). Side Note: The nickname bracket was another very good post of ours. And yes, I know I’m tooting my own horn. Somebody has to.
The factor that’s most important in the entire Dodgers ownership change (henceforce referred to as “The Dodger Effect” because that is a name that captures the extent of its awesomeness) is that it has made all other owners, fan bases, and teams, take notice, pop their heads out of their calculus and computer simulations and say, “Wow.” The Dodger Effect is far reaching. They have announced their presence as a superpower, disheartened their competition and become must-watch baseball. Plus Vin Scully is back in the fold. That’s awesome.
George Steinbrenner was more than once accused of buying championships. Yankees fans didn’t care. They had championships. The Dodgers are now trying to do the same thing for the first time in baseball since… Steinbrenner. That’s awesome.
The Dodger Effect can only happen in baseball where contracts, payrolls, and revenue have no ceiling. New Jersey Brooklyn Nets owner Mikhail Dmitrievitch Prokhorov is a billionaire. He can’t do what Magic Johnson and Co. have done because of the salary cap. He’s left to assemble what Bill Simmons has called the most boring, uncaptivating, non-marketable nucleus of All-Stars in basketball. The Dodger Effect has no such restrains and no such barriers in baseball. They are free to purchase talent, entertainment, and marketability. That’s awesome, too.
Even with all these moves, the Dodgers are two games back of the Giants for the NL West lead, and if the playoffs started today, they would get to watch from home (which will be really expensive soon due to their new TV deal that has essentially allowed all these moves to happen in the first place). That’s not awesome.
-Sean Morash
Stat of the Day: The Dodgers will pay Manny Ramirez $8.33 Million next year to not play for the A’s.
